


I Can Barely Say

by storm_dog_pirate



Category: An Ember in the Ashes - Sabaa Tahir
Genre: F/M, I Tried, have this from me tho, where are the other fics aksjhfdks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24453784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storm_dog_pirate/pseuds/storm_dog_pirate
Summary: The three times Helene almost told those three words to Harper, and the one time she finally did.
Relationships: Helene Aquilla/Avitas Harper
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	I Can Barely Say

**I.**

It is just after their last stand in Delphinium—the city is still in chaos, with people rushing around to look for the wounded and trying to get them to the still standing manors of the Gens that are converted to infirmaries. 

Helene tears through the crowd, ignoring the pain and tiredness seeping through her bones and rushing to the place she was forced to leave hours ago to go and face the Commandant. Even though the woman is now long gone, her presence could still be felt with the destruction caused to the city, something people won’t easily forget. The emperor and Livia are safe. The Empire would recover. Laia of Serra has brought back the balance. 

All still seem surreal to Helene, but there is still something she must make sure of.

_Please be all right._

Helene winds up to the familiar curve of the street to the gate, where Avitas and their remaining men tried to hold off the last defense of the inner city. But as she arrives at the scene, it becomes too disheartening that she has to slow to a stop. Bodies are splayed everywhere. The stench of blood and smoke hang heavily in the air, and death seems to have surrounded the streets.

By the looks of the defense, the frontline has suffered a tragic loss and has been completely overrun. A few Black Guards, with the help of other citizens, are hauling the bodies of the dead in rows by the side. The soldiers that survived look battered and weary. 

Harper is not one of them.

Helene casts her eyes around, refusing to believe that he’s not there. He can’t be gone. He _can’t_ be.

“ _Shrike!_ ”

That voice. She whirls around to the direction of it, and sees Harper limping towards her with a look of obvious relief etched on his face. Everything fades away around her and focuses on the man coming to her.

He stops a feet away, his hands twitching at his side like he doesn’t know what to do with them. He settles on a hand on her arm instead and looks at her with worried crease on his eyebrows. 

Helene’s first thought is to reprimand him of the worry he has because _he_ is the one that needs to be worried about. Blood runs down from his temple to his chin, his armor long gone from his body and multiple cuts have rained down on his undershirt. 

But the thought is forgotten when she looks back at his green eyes that are shining and warm and open. _Alive. He’s alive._ The mere thought of it makes her eyes burn. She cannot move.

“You’re all right,” Avitas breathes, one of those rare smiles curling his lips. Then he blinks repeatedly, like he remembers something important, and straightens. “Only thirty men have survived the defense. Dex and Faris were among them. We were vastly outnumbered and would have all died if it weren’t for—”

Helene cuts him off and pulls him into a tight hug, a sound that resembles a sob coming out from her as she does, and she holds on to him like he would disappear if she let go.

Harper’s arms come around her a moment later, warm and welcoming. “I’m fine,” he murmurs against her hair and pulls away, just enough to look into her eyes. He stays silent as he reaches up a hand to her cheek, his eyes saying all the things he wants to say aloud. It doesn’t even need a genius to figure it out.

She should say _it_ back, but she still finds the words stuck in the back of her throat. 

A shout of aid echoes through the street, and the two of them pull away quickly, already bolting to the direction of the voice.

Perhaps some other time, then.

**II.**

It is at least five months later when Helene is plagued by a nightmare. 

The memory plays back in her mind clearly—the time when Marcus had sent five hundred men to the Umbral Pass to deal as much damage to the Karkauns as their small force could before they march to Antium. 

She can still hear the shouts of despair the rear guards make as they are overwhelmed by another large force by the east, and she is reminded of the time when Baristus had stayed back and sacrificed himself in the path to hold the Karkauns off.

But in this nightmare, instead of Baristus, it is Harper that shouts at them.

“We’ll hold them off.” Harper’s green eyes are wild, which Helene has never seen them in such a way, as he pushes them towards the boat. “Go, Shrike. Warn the city. Warn the Emperor. Tell them there’s another—”

Dex wrenches Helene away from Avitas and shoves her down the path. But as she looks back to her shoulder, she sees a Tundaran taking Harper down, never to get up again.

Her lips part to shout his name—

A sharp gasp tears from her throat as she bolts up from her bunk and looks around, eyes wet with tears. She is able to make sense of her surroundings and remember that she is back in her room in Antium, the night after they have taken it back just the morning before. 

For a long while, nothing but her ragged breaths echo in her room, and then she is throwing the covers off her body and going out of her room.

Her feet seem to have their own destination and soon Helene finds herself opening the door to Harper’s room. 

Avitas bolts up from his own bed, hands already reaching for his scims, and stops when their eyes meet. “Shrike?” he says hesitantly, his voice breathless from sleep. “What’s wrong?”

Helene releases a breath she didn’t realize she is holding since the moment she left her room. “You ought to learn to lock your door,” she says tersely, far from the things she has in mind. _He’s okay. It was just a nightmare. He’s okay._

But she remembers that this is Harper; nothing goes unnoticed by him when it comes to her. She becomes aware of her state of dress. 

“Helene,” he tries again and stands, stepping towards her but still keeping a good distance. Then he adds gently, “What is it?”

When he says her name—her heart’s name—like that, she just becomes undone, reminding her of the time she sang his song, as he was dying on the boat, and she learns about how he feels for her, and of the time she realized hers for him. So she closes the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his shoulder.

 _He’s alive,_ she reminds herself, and she feels his arms around her immediately. It takes another few moments before Harper leads them back to his bunk, laying her down gently with him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Avitas’ voice is soft, like a lullaby, and his hands are rubbing gentle circles on her shoulder.

“A nightmare.” Helene tries not to remember every detail of it. But every time she closes her eyes, she sees Harper’s body on the ground and she cannot do anything about it. Her hands fist on his shirt. “In the Umbral Pass. You died and I didn’t even tell you—” She ends up choking on her words.

His arms tighten around her, his lips ghosting over her temple before he presses a lingering kiss on her skin. “I’m still here,” he murmurs. Then he adds, “We’re still here.”

Helene only clutches at him and says nothing more. She is thankful for the silence that comes after, with her own strength coming back to her as the two of them are in each other’s arms, and she remembers the fact that he is right. They are still here. And they would both see the day when there is no more hatred among the people they have fought alongside with.

The nightmare does not return again that night, and for the longest time, Helene sleeps peacefully.

**III.** ****

The third time is quite unpleasant; in the heat of an argument. It is several weeks after Avitas had held her that night in his room, and they have been closer between that time and now.

Maybe it is the main reason when something wrong comes up with the Karkauns demanding for the appearance of either the Blood Shrike or someone else of high ranks that Helene immediately squashes Harper’s suggestion to go himself.

They thought that the tension between the Martials and the Karkauns had died down, but now it looks like it still stands.

“For all we know this could be a trap to lure _you_ in, Blood Shrike,” Avitas says, voice echoing loudly in the war room. Even Dex and Faris look in agreement with him, though they do not voice their opinions. They seem to be more interested in their argument. “I will go with a runner, just in case it goes wrong. Give me a week to settle it.”

Helene turns to him sharply. He cannot be serious in going alone near enemy territory. “This is exactly what they want. Why else would they ask someone of high rank to settle a deal with them? They could have asked for someone else from their own to come to us if they really want to talk.” She pauses. “They have caused too much to us to be the one to give demands of their own terms.”

“That is exactly why I will be the one to go. They will recognize me as your second. For sure they will consider me to settle terms with.”

She doesn’t want to consider it, and she remembers a time from long ago. She musters all the coldness she has learned when she trained to be a mask. “What happened to _‘don’t act the part your enemy has written for you’_?”

A shadow crosses his face, and Helene knows he remembers his own line. “It will be more in their favor if you will be the one to go. We cannot have it.” He levels her glare with his own. “It wouldn’t be much of a loss if something bad happens to me in the meeting.”

He might as well have driven a blade in her chest. She finds her voice rising. “Do you really think that low of yourself? You think it wouldn’t be a loss if you actually _die_ there?”

“Why are you against this? Do you not trust me to be able to handle it?”

“Do not insult me, Captain Harper.”

“Then _why_?”

“It’s because I—” She stops herself before she can say it. They cannot afford this between them. Not right now that they might have another problem in their hands. She is reminded of why she distanced herself to him the night they had arrived at Delphinium after Antium’s fall, the night she realized she wanted him, but duty always comes first. She cannot let her personal feelings or distractions get in the way.

_Duty unto death._

Helene recovers and straightens her back, ignoring the bewildered expression of both Dex and Faris, and Harper’s impassive face. But his eyes say otherwise.

“Very well, Captain Harper. You will go,” she says, mustering all the authority she has in her tone. “I want _all_ details of what will transpire in your meeting when you return.” _You will come back. I will not lose you._ She hopes he understands the underlying meaning to her order. 

Harper gives her a sharp salute before he turns and goes out of the war room.

He comes back after nine days, a little late from the time he had told them, and gives her the full report of the meeting with the Karkauns. They do not talk about her outburst in the war room in the later days.

That is because deep down, they already know what she had meant.

  
  


**and I.**

It just comes unexpectedly one night, almost two years after the end of the war, when Helene learns that Harper has returned from Blackcliff. 

He was requested to oversee the batch of new soldiers to be trained, the only difference now is that not only Martials can be the only ones to have training, but anyone who _wants_ to train, and the old, _brutal_ ways are no longer applied, but still arduous enough to produce fit-for-duty soldiers.

Helene has retreated from her duties for the night and she finds herself heading to his room, all the while hoping he still hasn’t retired for the night.

Harper is indeed awake by the time she opens the door to his room—and it is unlocked yet again, she realizes—and he is standing by his desk, looking through the paperwork that has piled up. He looks up with a startled expression when she enters.

“Blood Shrike,” he says, and salutes.

Helene is about to tell him about formalities when they are already off duty, but forgets about it when she notices something on his head. She frowns. “Is that. . . a _flower crown_?”

He quickly snaps a hand up to his head like he isn’t aware of wearing it, but smiles a moment later. He doesn’t take it off. “Ah, yes. His Majesty gave it to me in the gardens earlier when I arrived,” he says. “Too pretty not to be worn.” 

She gives a surprised laugh and she tries to imagine how it looked when her nephew decided to put a flower crown on her second’s head. She finds herself smiling despite herself with the imagery. “You mean you went around the palace wearing it?”

Avitas shrugs. “Why not? I was off duty for the rest of the day, anyway.” His eyes light up. “You should have seen Dex when he got one as well.” 

“I admire your bravery, Captain Harper.”

“You doubt me too much, Blood Shrike.” Then he chuckles softly, a rare sound he does but Helene always likes to hear, and settles down the papers back to his desk. “How’s your week?”

She doesn’t know when they started asking each other of their week instead of information from the spies they have sent around. Or when they started opening up to each other instead of keeping a distance between them. Or when she started realizing the things that are already obvious in front of her.

So she tells him about hers, asks about his after, and they settle on a comfortable conversation that had already been familiar to them, but haven’t pondered it out loud. 

She does not know how much time they spent talking about their day or week, and later Helene finds herself loss for words as she stares into his green eyes, the ones that bare his soul and the goodness he never acknowledges he has, the ones that hold a fire and determination that always keep her marching and alive, and the ones that see her as both Helene _and_ the Blood Shrike and yet never change the way he looks at her.

It comes to her thoughts on how he easily earned his way to her heart in the past years, with his loyalty and calmness and bravery and everything that made him _Harper_ although they started in rough terms, and now she thinks of all the times he lent her his strength when her own cannot keep her up and realizes that they have kept each other marching through the war.

The obviousness of all of it crashes at her like a tidal wave and she finds herself huffing in disbelief when she realizes how dense she is of how _much_ she feels for this man. 

Avitas furrows his eyebrows. “Was my question funny or—”

“I love you.” It is out of her mouth even before she can think of it, and she smiles on how it felt to finally be able to say it aloud. She feels tears prick at her eyes and she huffs a laugh. It never occurred to her how easy it could have been to say it. She had been hiding behind the walls around her for so long. 

“ _I love you,_ ” she says again, and Avitas is as still as a statue. “I’m not saying this under the pretense of anything. I’m saying this because I mean it and it is what you deserve to hear—”

He reaches her in two quick strides and closes the distance between their faces, his mouth crashing on hers in a passionate kiss that feels like coming home.

Helene responds in kind, one hand in his hair and the other fisted on his shirt. This is unlike any of the ones they had before—they were short and chaste and felt rushed, and the one they had after the fall of Antium was out of desperation and want. 

This is the one that is long overdue, the one to finally let out all the pent up feelings they have kept at bay for so long because of duty. 

She kisses him harder, letting her feelings flow through the kiss, the love that she once thought as a distraction intensifying with the feel of his hands on her waist. Because in the end, it is love that kept her going as well. The love for her people. For her sister. For her nephew. For the Empire. 

Helene has just been looking at it in a different way.

Avitas pulls away later and rests his forehead against hers. His breath ghosts against her lips as he breathes, “I know. I’ve known for quite a while now. But finally hearing it from you is different.” He chuckles softly. “You sure do know how to make a captain wait, Shrike.” 

“It was worth it anyway.” She laughs back, and the tears fall from her eyes. But she knows that it is not out of pain this time.

Harper presses a lingering to her forehead, then says, “I love you too.” 

And at that moment, Helene knows, she would never get tired of hearing it again.

_She is finally home._


End file.
